The Funeral
by Dancing Darkness
Summary: He was a bad person, thats what they all say. The human perception is so limited. Only Time Lords see things for what they truly are. Only Time Lords can mourn for what was truly lost. Fifth part of the Unexpected series.


I'm not sure what inspired this particular fic, it just sort of happened out of another 'what if' moment. This is the way I've sort of always felt about the Master, even when I watch the old episodes....

This is the fifth part in the _'Unexpected' Series_, the other parts will explain some bits so reading them is a good idea. But if you're lazy, like me, this works pretty well as a stand alone.

Anywho! Hope you like it! Please read and review!

Allons-y!

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**The Funeral**

It was a solemn day. A cold day. Well it wasn't day really. It was night. Same thing in the end though right? The wind ripped through John's hair and battered his jacket. He squinted his eyes in the onslaught as he gazed at the pyre. The pyre that held a fallen brother in arms.

He didn't expect the humans to understand why they took such care. This man was a killer, a madman and completely unrepentant too. But that was not why they honoured him.

He didn't know what he'd expected when he was taken aboard the Valiant by his father, he'd been told of the fight and of the bloody struggle. Of the year that never was. Apparently he had spent the year in hiding with Sarah Jane as the whole confusion had happened not long after his father had dropped him off. He was returning after refuelling at Cardiff when everything went wrong apparently. His father had been too terrified to tell even those allied with him. If the Master had found out he had a four year old son things could have turned incredibly nasty.

When John had been taken aboard he'd been met with victorious faces, people celebrating just being alive. They remembered the struggle, being at the eye of the storm when the paradox machine fell, but he recalled nothing. Only his father had shown anything else. In those eyes that were so like his own there was a solemnity, a sadness, that caused John's happy grin to melt away. This was a time of mourning.

What's more his father hadn't expected him to help. No one had. He was only young after all. But it was his place, his father did not argue this and just accepted John at his side. First they straightened the body where it had fallen, laying the Master out as if he was sleeping. They then proceeded to kneel beside him, one on each side and, with the left hand, touch their fingers to his temples. His father reached across and placed his right hand against John's own temple to synchronise their thoughts until they thought as one, shared as one. They closed their eyes.

Then they sang. They sang an impossibly old song that had been passed down for generations. It echoed through the hall and told the tale of life. The humans couldn't hear it, it is a song sung of the mind in a complexity that they could never comprehend – they are such simple beings. It they had they would have wept for the Master instead of despising him so.

The song chimed across the stars, reaching the Cascade of their long forgotten home to resonate with the similar sonatas there. They even felt a gentle inquiry from other telepathic species, mourning for their loss and urging their song on.

The singing continued, even as he and his father removed their hands from the body. In unison they bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Now, John knew, was the Time of Weeping. This really confused the humans. John felt through his father all that he knew of the Master, felt friendship and sadness and betrayal. Such terrible, terrible loneliness for their loss. Together they relived this man privately as they sang. Tears rolled down their cheeks silently, the only tears that John knew that they would allow themselves to cry.

They sat there for a whole minute. As was due for the Time of Weeping.

Next came the harder bit, well for John at least. The body was taken to the TARDIS by his father, he allowed no human to touch it for that would have tainted it. He laid the Master down in a room within that John had never been to before. It was probably created by the TARDIS for this purpose, new and clean. A fresh start well deserved he supposed. The body was laid out precisely, like before, but this time his father began to remove the Master's clothing. John moved to help without being asked. The process was slow and meticulous, each layer folded and placed to one side. Each thing had an exact spot. Each piece of jewellery was laid out in a pattern, separate and isolated. From his ring to his watch, everything was handled with extreme care.

When they'd stripped the body they moved to the even more careful process of washing it, cleansing it. Waters purer than that found on any planet for galaxies around were used to remove the dirt from the cold, dead corpse. The work was gentle and caring. John knew, from where his father's and his mind were closely telepathically linked, that this should have been done by a member of the Master's close kin. Traditionally, if no kin could be found then it would fall to a figure of authority. As the only other Time Lords in existence the task fell to them. But that did not mean it was treated with any less care, any less attention.

When they were finished they redressed him. They gave him fresh clothes provided by the TARDIS, pressed and new. They replaced all the items he'd owned back in his pockets; they were not thieves to liberate his possessions even in death. His father checked the body over for faults. With a nod he deemed it ready.

Now was the Time of Giving and both he and his father brought forth an item of their own. His father placed a pressed silver leaf in the Master's breast pocket, a little piece of their homeworld to guide him. John had nothing like that so he gave a portion of his blood, a small wound on his palm bled into a cloth and placed alongside the leaf. Proof of old and new, the old home and the new blood. In his father's mind he read that this was to symbolise mourning, they lost a piece of themselves in his death and so represented it in material possessions.

Then they wrapped him in white cloth woven in the heart of the TARDIS, her contribution to the ceremony. They bound the material with leather cords tied in knots that John didn't even know he knew. When it was secure he and his father left to build the pyre.

They cut the wood themselves, shaved it and stacked it. It took a long time and soon it was evening, it was also tiring to John's small hands but he never complained. This was too important. They built many tiers into the pyre, being sure to make it steady and strong. Lastly, oil was poured over the logs so they would light quickly.

Fire was the way Time Lords buried their dead. It was to do with souls really, as John understood it. They were shapeshifters and John would wear thirteen different faces before he died, become thirteen different men. When one Time Lord saw another it wasn't the body they recognised, it was signature regeneration energy and the mind. The mind, the soul, never changed with the body. It always continued. It was that solid fact that led to the belief that the body of the Time Lord was but a vessel. They burned it to be practical and to remind the family that the soul moved on, changed form. Maybe there was some religion in that. It also provided closure. As if he and his father needed that.

The Master's body was placed in the centre and they watched it for a while in silence. His father stated the eulogy, as was the Time Lord practice of commemoration. It was lost on human ears of course for it was sung in the mind to live on in eternity. Without much further ado his father strode forward and placed the burning torch he held to the oil soaked wood. It caught fire quickly and soon the whole thing was ablaze.

They continued to watch in silence and respect as the body also caught light, watched the fire spit ash and dust into the sky.

John was first to leave, he sensed it was time. His father needed to be alone. John walked back to the nearby UNIT base to find Martha and her family. Martha was meant to be looking after him after all. He found them a little away from the others, just spending time together. Celebrating. But he still couldn't see what there was to be joyous about.

His face must have been cold because Martha exclaimed, "John, what's wrong?" She smiling, trying to cheer him up. She picked him up and sat him in her lap.

He knew he couldn't speak yet. It was the final stage of burial, the Time of Silence and Contemplation. A time when he sang the song still and was quiet in his heart. Long story short, he said nothing.

Martha frowned, now she was concerned. "What's wrong, John? Where's your dad?" she asked.

He still didn't speak.

"What's wrong with him?" Martha's mother asked. As much as she hated the Doctor she couldn't bring herself to hate his son. He was, after all, adorable.

"I don't know," Martha muttered, very concerned now. "Are you not feeling well?"

John rolled his eyes, that was an understatement. Nothing about this situation was at all well. He reached out a hand to touch her temple and his eyes begged a question.

"What's he doing?" asked Tish curiously, coming forward and kneeling next to them.

"Well the Doctor says all Time Lords are telepathic, they can speak without actually speaking," Martha explained. "He said for him to do it to a human he'd have to touch the temple. Maybe John can't talk and this is merely his way of telling me?"

The family all gazed at the odd little boy for a moment. "Is it safe?" Martha's mother asked.

"No one's died yet," Martha replied and slowly, but deliberately, placed his small hand to her temple. She gasped and closed her eyes against the onslaught John unleashed. A thousand emotions and thoughts, all whirling together. She looked deep into John's eyes, "you can't talk," she said. "But it's more than that."

"What's wrong with him?" Martha's mother asked again, edging forward with concern once more.

"They're mourning, him and the Doctor. They're grieving and while they do it they can't talk, not at all," Martha replied, her eyes beginning to fill with the sadness she felt from John.

"He killed all those people," her father protested.

"But he is one of them and they are so few now," Martha interrupted. "They mourn him and forgive and-" Suddenly she stopped as she felt tears on her cheeks.

"What is it, Martha?" Tish placed a hand on her shoulder.

"These aren't my tears," she told them distractedly, "they're John's and the Doctor's. They're honestly sorry he's dead. They're singing for him. With their minds I mean. It's so beautiful and so sad." John gently pulled back and looked at the floor.

"Both of them?" asked Tish.

"Yeah, it's like their minds are melded together. You know like Spock in Star Trek?" John gave her a slightly withering look and she smiled. "Well, it's like that. They're thinking the same, well not exactly the same but sorta together. John never met the Master but through the Doctor he can see him. Know him. I don't understand it all."

"You wouldn't," a quiet voice spoke from the doorway. John knew without turning to look that it was his father. Though they were losing the connection it was still transmitting, if a little feebly. He got down from Martha's lap and went to him, reaching up to take that familiar hand. Skin contact accelerated their telepathy and he saw flashes of memory.

"Is he alright?" He looked over to Martha; she was really concerned about him it seemed.

"It's his first Mourning," the Doctor explained, running a hand through John's hair. "You never quite get used to it. He'll be talking by the morning."

"You'll really miss him, after all he did?" Martha's mother asked, glaring at his father as usual.

His father put his free hand in his pocket and looked her square in the eyes, "He was terrible," he agreed. "But he was one of us and there are so few of my kind left that every person we lose is a great sadness. He will be missed in the way a candle is missed from a dim room. Humans can't see past the little things to the bigger picture. It's not your fault." He stopped and looked down and John. John gazed back at his father and together they began to smile. "But we're both alive and I suppose that's something," the Doctor said quietly.

There was a confused silence for a while before the Doctor moved on. "We'll have to drop our dear Captain home so, Mrs Jones, might I request your services to look after my son?"

She started a bit before agreeing, John went to her tentatively. He knew his dad would need some time. John would too. He may not have known him, had never smiled with him, cried with him or laughed with him they were bonded. Being a Time Lord was a shared suffering, culture and history. It was a classification fast dying away with only two of them left. He may never have done any one of those things but John could honestly say without any regret that he loved the Master, loved him as a brother, loved him as a father and loved him as an uncle. Most importantly, he loved him as a comrade fallen too soon in battle.

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The Doctor's Eulogy:

There goes a man I knew of old.

A veteran on roads so cold.

He was a broken child, a shattered soul

that knew not kindness, compassion or love at all.

But as terrible as he could be

I'll never forget a word he said to me

for he is as stardust to the night sky.

He is the song of birds awing on high

- or the last whisper of the autumn breath.

He is a soul given too early unto death.

And though many shall remember him with hate,

a hate he rightly does deserve,

I shall bow my head and weep for his fate.

I shall remember his each and every single word.

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So? How was it? I know the meter in the poetry is a bit out of kilter but then again the Doctor isn't really a poet is he?

Please review and boost my confidence!

- D


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